Now what kind of approach by the reader did THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY count on? It had to assume a special way of reading. It expected the reader, as he read, to undergo the sort of inner experience that, in an external sense, is really just waking up out of sleep in the morning. The feeling one should have about it is such as to make one say, "My relationship to the world in passive thoughts was, on a higher level, that of a person who lies asleep. Now I am waking up." It is like knowing, at the moment of awakening, that one has been lying passively in bed, letting nature have her way with one's body. But then one begins to be inwardly active. One relates one's senses actively to what is going on in the color permeated, sounding world about one. One links one's own bodily activity to one's intentions. The reader of The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity should experience something very like this waking moment of transition from passivity to activity, though of course on a higher level. He should be able to say, "Yes, I have certainly thought thoughts before. But my thinking took the form of just letting thoughts flow and carry me along. Now, little by little, I am beginning to be inwardly active in them." - from Rudolf Steiner's AWAKENING TO COMMUNITY This seminal work asserts that free spiritual activity understood as the human ability to think and act independently of ones physical nature is the most appropriate path today for inner development and true self-knowledge. This is not simply a volume of philosophy, but also a friendly guide to practice and the experience of living thinking. Rudolf Steiner provides a step-by-step account of how we can come to experience living, intuitive thinking, the conscious experience of pure spirit. Since this book was written more than a century ago, many have tried to discover the kind of new thinking that can help us better understand the spiritual, ecological, social, political, and philosophical issues that face us. Steiner showed a path that leads from ordinary thinking to the level of pure spiritual activityùtrue inner freedom. [When referring to this item please quote our ID 11507]